


When the Guzzoline Runs Out

by ahimsabitches



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Equestrian, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 09:35:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5329331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahimsabitches/pseuds/ahimsabitches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The start of an equestrian Mad Max AU. Because the guz' won't last forever. If you use this, please credit me/let me know. I want to read it!</p>
            </blockquote>





	When the Guzzoline Runs Out

The great well of natural gas and oil below Richard’s refinery ran dry eight years after Colonel Moore took the Citadel.

The desert no longer rang with the roars of great steel and iron beasts.

In the howling silence, a new sound began to grow: the drumbeat of hooves.

Breeding herds of beautiful but hardy Arabians and sturdy, strong Barbs with as much diligence and fervor as he bred his wives, Immortan Joe reasserts his godhood among the sandblasted, rusted hulks of abandoned vehicles, quickly recycled for parts and decoration for saddles, bridles, traces, chariots. New machines of war, driven by pounding hooves, not pistons, bellowing lungs, not engines. 

The Triumvirate rides across the Wastes, the Three Horsemen of the Revelation: the Reckoning, the Judgment, the Redemption.

Joe’s stallion is the last of the Vanners, a heavy, strong working breed with threads of Friesian and Shire woven into its history. Black coat and blue eyes to match his rider. Khan’s blood flows in the fiery mounts ridden by Rictus and the Imperators.

Kalashnikov rides Flintlock, the flame-coated son of a desert-born Arab and a Thoroughbred whose strides ate the ground.

Richard is pulled on a glorious gold-and-steel chariot by a son of Khan: Murdoch. His traces ring with Old World coins and trinkets.

Breeding herds are guarded jealously. Those animals deemed unfit to ride are butchered and traded in Joe’s economy of flesh.

Wretched pick carcasses clean. Tough, keratinous hooves are given to teething toddlers. Long bones become clubs. Skulls become totems. Are prayed to.

War boys no longer worship at the altar of V8, no longer salute with fingers steepled. They salute with hands fisted, linked by touching thumbs. The bit, the link between horse and rider. The pounding hooves; the new music of the Wasteland. Eo is the new deity, the Dawn Horse, the rising sun of Joe’s glory.

As before, so now: history will be written on the back of a horse.


End file.
